Disagree on your Green jersey comment. Champions win bike races - not points and a second tier "jersey". Agree on the MVDP posts. But I am a FAN - not an professional, or worse yet, amateur analyst like many of the folks that post on this site - many of whom probably can barely ride a bike, especially anything other than their road bike.
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don't know if that sounds like the best season calander.
Next year is the last year that MvdP will get a WC road race on a circuit that suits him, during his prime years as pro cyclist. So, that should be a prime goal and important in making a seasons planning.
If he wants to the Olympics and wants an MTB world title he definitely should focus on it next spring/summer. That should make him thinking in skipping the Giro and Tour. Especially considering the tour will not have a more 'classic' approach in the Nord of French in the first week, like the last 2 seasons. But imediately start with medium mountain en consequentely Pyrenees. Changes for yellow are almost zero and the number of stages that MvdP suits will be limited (as far as we can judge the route already)
I would say it make more sense to focus on:
Next year is the last year that MvdP will get a WC road race on a circuit that suits him, during his prime years as pro cyclist. So, that should be a prime goal and important in making a seasons planning.
If he wants to the Olympics and wants an MTB world title he definitely should focus on it next spring/summer. That should make him thinking in skipping the Giro and Tour. Especially considering the tour will not have a more 'classic' approach in the Nord of French in the first week, like the last 2 seasons. But imediately start with medium mountain en consequentely Pyrenees. Changes for yellow are almost zero and the number of stages that MvdP suits will be limited (as far as we can judge the route already)
I would say it make more sense to focus on:
- a limited number of CX (hopefully not to many as he has nothing to prove anymore in this discipline) races + CX worlds
- a well prepared spring campaign (without Ardennes)
- MTB season from may till summer
- WC in Glasgow + focussing on autumn classics that suits him
MvdP crashed out of the lead group in his little gravel race today. Looks like the time away from CX and MTB have eroded his skills. I was afraid that would happen. All the road racing is just taking all the shine away from him. He's definitely lost some mojo.
Without seeing it, I wondered if that was the case as well, he's done very little off-road racing in the last few years, the skills may have got rusty. That's the thing with Nino, he has very few crashes; the one in Mont St Anne was the first serious one I can remember.
No it doesn't.....
Yes it does. Road cycling is way more popular than those disciplines.
Lol, obviously it does.
I doubt anyone that doesn’t follow the sport can’t name a single cyclocross or MTB rider. Heck, I can’t and I’m sure many others on this forum can’t if they didn’t ride on the road.
Are you all thick or just ignorant? You're as bad as F1 fans who can't understand people who watch GT racing, touring cars, or Rallying........But claim to be motorsport fans.
Nobody is arguing that Road racing isn't the biggest discipline - we all know it is. However, that doesn't mean it's the best, or brings the most glory.....
You all really need to take your road tinted specs off, and watch other types of cycling. If you only watch the road, then you're not really a cycling fan.
Nobody is arguing that Road racing isn't the biggest discipline - we all know it is. However, that doesn't mean it's the best, or brings the most glory.....
You all really need to take your road tinted specs off, and watch other types of cycling. If you only watch the road, then you're not really a cycling fan.
If road racing is the biggest discipline, inherently it will bring the biggest glory then.
For the average cycling fan, road racing brings more glory. Yes, being World Champion is more prestigious, but which is the percentile of cycling fans who care about off road cycling?
If MVDP cares for mainstream prestige, road is way more important for that. And I watch a lot of cross and MTB. But we can't deny the facts and those are that if some rider wants a crack at mainstream glory, he needs to go to the road.
Of course he can stay in MTB or Cross and be known as a glory in a small niche, but apart from the few who follow it, few persons know about Absalon, Schurter, Peat, Minnaar, Anne-Caroline Chausson, etc.
I too want for MTB and CX to be more recognized. But they are still a good years away from that.
Are you telling me road cycling isn't cycling?
So someone isn’t a true baseball, basketball, or American football if you get don’t watch pros, college, and the other country leagues.
You might got my post wrong, I'm not saying they aren't true fans, I'm just saying that the average cycling fan (all disciplines combined) only really cares about road cycling. It isn't less of a true fan for that, Just that the cycling fans who have knowledge about other disciplines don't make a significant proportion of all cycling fans.
On the other side of the spectrum we have the Pinkbike comment section, where a great amount of posters there are not aware of anything except the bare minimum about road cycling and sometimes even consider it lesser than mountain bike (even XC is sometimes put on a lower step compared to downhill/freestyle).
Anyone who rides a bike (especially kids) will be a lot more impressed with a guy like MVDP and his freakish handling/driving skills, than someone like EVP who literally probably can't even pop a wheelie. And it isn't just the "tricks", but the ability to carry speed in and out of corners, and the feel for grip is *** conditions. Pretty much the stuff that used to separate F1 drivers from Indy and Nascar before all the driving aids came into play and it was just huge power, manual gearbox, and only the rubber to provide traction control.
He rode CX and MTB his whole life, you don't just lose those skills. It's basically muscle memory for him. He fell because sometimes people fall.
One fall is not really strong evidence and might not be indication of this at all, however it seems unlikely that one can just stop training the discipline for considerable time without losing some routine needed for top-end-competition, even for a talent like mvdp.
He barely stopped training off-road. Maybe during the back injury recovery (from Heusden-Zolder DNF in december to the end of the Giro), but he was training in Livigno with his MTB in the build up to the Tour (with Ondrej Cink and even doing some big jumps with it) and was also doing long runs with the MTB/CX/Gravel bike in the period between returning from Wollongong and going to Italy to the gravel worlds.
Good Lord. Now people questioning MVDP's off-tarmac bike handling skills? Anyone who has followed him knows he actually crashes/near crashes a fair amount - like most of the absolute legends in wheel sports that push the boundaries of speed and grip beyond the "average pro guys". MVDP is literally taking seconds out of guys (including Wout) in CX races in and out of corners. And compared to most pure roadies like EVP he is on a whole different planet. The guy managed a 3rd place at Roubaix in '21 purely off his handle in those *** conditions.
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